Thursday October 06, 2005
Thursday October 06, 2005 Murphy on OpenSolaris and CDDL
For the record, I have never met him, never spoken with him, have not bought him flowers nor given him stock tips. All the same, he gets CDDL, and he gets the problems we were trying to solve when drafting CDDL. Jim blogged it here, and Chris Baker sent me a timely email pointer to the article as well. Thanks, guys. Paul Murphy's article is here, and for those of you who are link averse the relevant quotes about CDDL and OpenSolaris are:
"The best answer so far, at least in my opinion as a non lawyer, is Sun's community development license. Basically this is a have your cake and eat it too deal: developers keep proprietary code proprietary, participate in the free as in freedom world being built up around openSolaris, and work inside a patent umbrella held up, not just by Sun, but by mutual agreement among participating developers. In other words, Joe developer can adopt openSolaris and the CDDL ( Common Development Distribution License) without spending a nickel on legal fees and be reasonably confident that not doing something criminal (or just criminally stupid) will suffice to protect himself from legal action."
"Combine the CDDL with the fact that Solaris is the best OS around, and it's easy to see why the openSolaris community is exploding..."
p.s. to Paul: I'm a proud 'vi' user, too. But not on a Sun 60. :-)
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-10-06 18:50:55.0) Permalink
Mary Meeker - the Managing Director of Morgan Stanley's global technology research team - took the Web2.0 audience on a fast-paced, energetic walk through her view of Internet Trends this morning. Wow. I didn't think I could meet someone who talks faster than Bryan but Mary can certainly give him a run for his money. I type almost as fast as she talks but it turns out that I didn't need to - Mary's Internet Trends preso is available online - found via the Morgan Stanley TechResearch page. Rich Sharples is also in San Francisco today and blogged his thoughts on Meeker's eBay/Skype discussion here. Mary and team at Morgan Stanley are bullish about the opportunities (and the potential dislocations) in the internet and mobile internet technology areas. And ... Mary provided a healthy reminder that the mobile internet business is dramatically different outside the US. Here's an area where those of us who fly the star spangled banner are way way behind. Bottom line - if you're interested in tech and you're interested in trends - check out Mary's slides.
Technorati Tag: Web 2.0
Technorati Tag: web2con
(2005-10-06 16:08:18.0) Permalink
Our very own Jonathan Schwartz sat on a panel today with Mitchell Baker and Tim O'Reilly at John Battelle's Web2.0 Conference in San Francisco. All three were articulate, smart and provocative.
Of note: Tim pointed out that Jonathan is probably the most senior executive blogger out there, and pointed out that blogging takes time, and asked why Jonathan thinks the time is worth it. Jonathan's tongue-in-cheek reply was that blogging takes a lot less time than 1:1 interviews. His deeper answer - that there is an incredible power in community, that most people he knows in the software world make choices not based solely on economics but on philosophies and beliefs, that developers join things - they don't buy things. And that communication is a critical element in creating communities. So - he is communicating in his blog to help build a community around the Sun technology platform. And he readily stated that he's using the transparency of his blog as a competitive weapon. (And he named a few of his competitors that spend over 1/2 billion in advertising, instead.)
Of note: When asked about open source, Jonathan said that "Everything Sun does will be open source. Everything." And he advised other software companies to "Get to open source quickly. There is no downside that I can see. Get to free quickly. There is no downside that I can see." Bold statements.
Of note: Someone from the audience asked Jonathan about Solaris, all the great features in the latest version of Solaris (DTrace was named in the question), and how open source fits into that? The questioner wanted to know if the engineers are more inspired because they get to open the source? Jonathan answered by mentioning that DTrace is now being implemented in FreeBSD and that we're supporting that effort. Then he moved on to point out that there are 1000 Sun employees in the newly launched OpenSolaris community, and over 7900 community members from outside Sun. He thinks that's great. "Are Solaris developers feeling like they're responsible for everything? No." He mentioned the creation of an OpenSolaris governance process - and that Sun employees involved in Solaris are "having to learn that they're not going to be in control of everything. That's a good thing." He went on to use one of my favorite phrases - "Innovation happens elsewhere."
My thoughts: The question about Solaris would not have been on the radar screen 2 years ago. The combination of Solaris 10 innovations + disruptive free pricing of Solaris + open source via the OpenSolaris project have changed the landscape. Solaris and OpenSolaris are firmly on the radar screen for customers and developers and technologists. Especially when you consider the context - the Sun/AMD partnership, the 2004 acquisition of Andy Bechtolsheim's Kealia company, the new x64 Galaxy boxes from Bechtolsheim's team, Sun's commitment to management of your data and SarBox compliance, the throughput computing advances in the upcoming Niagara hardware, the Java ES platform, the promising announcement of a Sun/Google partnership...
As a result, the ecosystem for the Solaris platform and the OpenSolaris technology is growing, and fast. I loved the question. And I loved the level of detail and understanding in Jonathan's answer. The President of a 36,000 employee company knows about the port of the OpenSolaris DTrace software to FreeBSD - how cool is that!
Technorati Tag: Web 2.0
Technorati Tag: web2con
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-10-06 14:37:55.0) Permalink Comments [2]
